


Resistance

by giddyromilly



Category: Twilight (Movies), Twilight Series - All Media Types, Twilight Series - Stephenie Meyer
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Imprinting (Twilight), Anti-Imprinting, Gen, Imprinting, Imprinting (Twilight), Twilight AU, Vampires, Werewolves
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-14
Updated: 2019-05-14
Packaged: 2020-03-05 11:46:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 914
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18828058
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/giddyromilly/pseuds/giddyromilly
Summary: If Jacob could break obedience to his alpha's control, why not deny his imprint?





	Resistance

I shut Edward’s keening cries out, my own grief rising like bile. All I could do was shrug away from the gurney, covering my face with my hands, holding my breath to cast out the rank smell of her blood. Bella’s blood.

I was ashamed to run away. It’s what I was good at - avoiding hurt, avoiding hardship - but in this ending, the culmination of these useless weeks of watching Bella get sucked dry by that demon fetus, all I saw was horror and waste. 

A bell-like cry, different from Edward’s, rang down the hallway, and I uncovered my face. The monster. That she-bloodsucker had it, probably alone. I could take her - shred her, rip her, crush her skull - and gobble the demon whole. Be out before the rest of the Cullens got to me. 

But did I want to escape? No - with Bella gone, there wasn’t anything left for me here. I was alone. Seth and Leah could finally go back to Sam.

_I don’t want to live anyway. Might as well let the Cullens have me. Take their grief out on me._

I padded softly down the hall, my bare feet making scarcely a whisper. The hall ended at the library - Carlisle’s, I thought - and inside I heard one, slow heartbeat alongside Rosalie’s cooing. A heartbeat. Now _that_ I didn’t expect. Having heard Bella’s slow to a stop, the sound alongside my own in this lifeless house filled me with rage.

I felt the change coming. The rising anger, flexing of muscles, hair standing on end. A roar lay, throttled, in my chest. I held it, but only to keep Rosalie in the dark. If I was going to do this, I was going to succeed.

I turned the corner into the dim room. Rosalie’s back was to me, her bloodsucker ass planted in a chair facing the fireplace. She held the demon up, whispering sweet nothings to it. I grew closer, feet further silenced by the thick Persian carpet, and right before I let out the wolf, burst out of my skin into my other form, my eyes found the baby’s face.

It was as if I were a blind man, seeing the sun for the first time. She was a black hole I found myself being sucked into - her eyes, strangely conscious for those of a newborn, fixed upon my own. I couldn’t look away.

The facets of my life shifted. My grief, my rage, all were wiped clean from my brain, and all that remained was warmth, a fierce need to defend this child who looked at me with all the wisdom of the ages.

This was what Quil had felt, Sam, the rest. Those who had imprinted. I was imprinting… on this baby.

A _baby._ Bella’s baby.

Bella. Bella would have hated this - hated what it was turning me into, a mere moon to the infant’s massive planetary pull. Bella would have cried, seeing what it was turning me into, a man helpless against turning, against my alpha, against the imprint, against her stubborn love for that bloodsucking freak. Helpless, falling, clinging to the last thing that could remind me of her in this empty world.

_No._

I dropped to my knees, clenching my eyes shut. _Don’t look. If you don’t look she can’t trap you._

My inner voice rang out, spoken as if she was beside me. _Jacob_ , Bella’s voice admonished. _You defied your alpha. You broke his rule on your mind. This call does not define you. That pelt does not define you._

_You rule your own life._

Keeping my eyes closed was like wrestling down a bear. The pull to look, to take the child in my arms, to run with her and keep her safe - it was crippling. I felt helpless in the face of it - 

_You did when denying Sam too._

I wouldn’t. It wouldn’t be like this. I refused to let it be so.

My legs, trembling like birch leaves in the wind, fought me every inch that I took to rise to my feet. I yanked one foot from the floor to take a step back, pressing away from the baby’s pull as if it were the force of a rushing river. I grunted with the effort, straining, willing it not to be - 

“Mutt?” 

It was Rosalie. I could imagine her face, but I refused to look, to break my concentration. Her lip was probably curled back from her teeth, her knees bent ready to pounce, that _thing_ in her arms.

I growled in response, trying to flee, working to escape these steel bonds that were forming between me and the child that I could _feel_ feet from my chest. Her heartbeat was there, loud, louder than anything I’d ever heard -

And then, just like that, I was free.

I fell backwards, my own effort and weight bringing me down once the pull disappeared. I was crying before I hit the floor, lung-ripping sobs bursting from my throat. I was barely aware that Rosalie had left, that the heartbeat was fading with distance, until I felt cool hands on my face.

“Jacob,” Esme whispered, tears in her voice. “Oh Jacob. Our poor boy.”

My defenses stripped down, the grief and loss crashing against me like waves, I did what anyone would do. I curled inward, and let Esme’s cold arms bring me onto her lap. She held me and stroked my hair for what felt like hours, allowing me to cry.


End file.
